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Last Tuesday, sources have told Reuters that U.S. Federal Communications Commission may publish this Thursday its order overturning the net neutrality rules established in the Obama administration. State attorneys general and advocacy groups will be able to sue to block the order once it is published in the Federal Register. Amy Spitalnick, spokeswoman for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said that they will be withdrawing the original petition to refile it once the rule is published and confirmed that their coalition of attorney generals will be taking the FCC to court for its rollback of net neutrality. According to […]

The Royal Bank of Scotland is currently testing a digital teller named “Cora” which is intended to give a human face to the bank’s automated help service. According to director of innovation at NatWest Kevin Hanley, Cora will be able to answer customer questions round the clock so that its human colleagues can deal with more complex inquiries. If successful, it may even be used to train staff. Hanley added that the prototype can already have a two-way verbal conversation with customers via computers, tablets or mobile phones and learn from mistakes. It is expected to boost the bank’s efficiency […]

Tesla confirmed earlier this week that hackers have compromised its cloud computing platform. According to RedLock, a cloud security company, the carmaker’s Amazon Web Services environment had been breached to mine cryptocurrency. Tesla assured the public that the issue, which only affected internally used engineering test cars, was addressed within hours and no customer data had been stolen. RedLock said that the hackers were able to avoid detection by keeping computing power usage low and masking their Internet Protocol (IP) address with CloudFlare’s content delivery network service. Source: BBC

It was recently revealed that a new website called Trial Trackers will be logging institutions that do not report drug and medical trial results. According to Dr. Ben Goldacre, the tool should compel pharmaceutical organizations to properly disclose data and prevent the practice of burying unfavorable results. Goldacre pointed out that nobody ever got penalized for breaching proper reporting protocols. The Trial Trackers website will be taking its data from clinicaltrials.gov and will automatically find trials which have not reported on their given deadline. It will also compute how much the US government could collect in fines if it pursues […]

Last weekend, game developer FlightSimLabs apologized for including a Chrome password dump tool in its FSLabs A320-X game installer. The suspicious file had already been flagged as a virus by a number of antivirus products. A Reddit user discovered that a file called test.exe which comes from http://securityxploded.com was included in the installer package. The tool also runs with administrative rights on Windows Vista and later versions. However, FSLabs founder Lefteris Kalamaras pointed out that the tool was meant to counter password crackers that attempt to bypass the software’s DRM system with offline key generators. Kalamaras added that they decided […]

It was reported earlier this week that security researchers had sent “friendly warnings” to clients of Amazon servers who had left their storage unprotected. Around 50 alerts had been posted and many had received more than one warning. One such security researcher named Robbie Wiggins said that he regularly seek out and notify organizations who have their data exposed and revealed that while some had sent him monetary rewards, others did not even bother to put up contact details. It was noted that in the past 18 months, companies such as Uber, Verizon, Alteryx, the WWE, Dow Jones and three […]

Last Tuesday, a security researcher from Digita Security revealed the details of a Mac remote access trojan in a blog post. The malware apparently had been overlooked by antivirus manufacturers for two years. Chief research officer Patrick Wardle said that the Coldroot trojan is able to access the inner levels of the operating system to gain full remote control of the system as if the attacker were using the computer in person. The malware, which can also steal passwords and alter files, is often disguised as a document which asks the user for his password once opened. It also modifies […]

South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) chief Choe Heung-sik confirmed last Tuesday that the government will be supporting the cryptocurrency industry and normal transactions done under Know Your Customer (KYC) transparency. The country’s regulators had already mandated a system which disallows anonymous trading which came into effect last January 30. While it is still possible to trade without using one’s real name, all purchases made with cryptocurrencies or withdrawing to fiat will still require KYC compliance. Choe added that they will be rolling out plans that will encourage smaller banks to adopt the real-name trading system. Source: CCN

Facebook’s vice president of advertisement recently received heavy criticism for his opinion on the issue of Russian-bought ads and the previous US election. Rob Goldman tweeted last week that swaying was not the main goal of the said ads since majority of Russian ad spend had happened after the election. Goldman however, made an apology to Facebook staff after and said that the tweet was his own view and he should have probably had it reviewed internally before tweeting. Goldman’s tweet was in direct contradiction with special counselor Robert Mueller’s recent indictments where 13 Russians had been charged with election […]

In a speech last Monday at the University of Lisbon, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres stressed the for global rules on cyber warfare to minimize the impact of such attacks on civilians. Guterres said that cyberwarfare already exists, however, there is no scheme in place to regulate it and it is unclear how the Geneva Convention or international humanitarian law applies to it. Guterres added that the UN can be a platform where scientists to governments could work out such rules “to guarantee a more humane character” conflicts involving information technology. He also called on professors and engineers to contribute, […]

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